Time for an update! This one is posted from Helensville, New Zealand, just outside Auckland, the largest city in this country, halfway around the world from my home in Florida, USA. I am wrapping up a nationwide tour of New Zealand with top Nashville singer, songwriter, and entertainer--and my good friend--Terry Smith. We've had a great time touring here. The music has been good. Terry and I have been joined onstage for most shows by Andrew Bicknell (bass fiddle), and Val Cooke (piano), New Zealand musicians. For two shows we were joined by the fabulous Winnie Winston, a first-rank steel guitar and banjo player who relocated some years ago to New Zealand from the USA. Winnie has played with many of the great ones, from Bill Monroe to David Grisman and a host of others. It was a special thrill for me to play some swing onstage with Winnie. He made the smoke roll off of his steel guitar quite a few times as we did the shows!! I had big fun spending a couple of days with Winnie and Gwyneth at their house in Tawa, New Zealand. We visited and jammed and played many recordings.

I love to tour with Terry Smith. We've worked out sort of a duo-type setup. His beautiful songs and his rock-solid playing and singing make it possible for me to really work with the instrumental music, which is probably my greatest joy in music. I've been doing some singing on the shows as well, of course, and enjoy that too.

We've done a nationally-heard live radio show on Radio New Zealand, the NPR of New Zealand, which has a very large listening audience. We've done a couple of other widely-heard radio shows as well.

The scenery in New Zealand is gorgeous, as is the lovely summer weather of January. Flowers are in bloom everywhere. There is lots of beautiful mountain scenery. Friends Ian and Bev Fisher of Christchurch took us on a beautiful ride from that city across the country to the western coast, which included lots of wonderful Rocky Mountain-like countryside. The shipboard passage between the South Island and the North Island of the country was great, and and featured some of the most beautiful ocean views I've seen since travelling to Norway across the North Sea last year.

In New Zealand (called Land of the Long White Cloud) we've met lots of great people, of European and Asian descent, and Maori (descended from South Pacific islanders); eaten all sorts of food we had not had before; and just had an enormous amount of fun. I'm sure glad I don't live a normal life!

I wanted to get to Australia on this trip, as I mentioned in the last update, but that was not to be this time. We are already setting up another tour "down under" for 2006, and that one will include Australia. We are working on booking the Tamworth Festival, the biggest acoustic music festival in the southern hemisphere, which is held in January. It will be great if we can make that a part of another country tour with Terry Smith next January. I'm also working on an additional trip to the southern hemisphere to do trio music with Andrew Bicknell on bass fiddle; probably Graeme Lovejoy, Kiwi picker extraordinaire, on guitar; and me on guitar, mandolin, Dobro, and whatever. Some recording with that combination might also be in the cards. Ya never know!!

Neal Jeffries, Max Whitehouse, and Andrew Bicknell, among others, are involved in setting up future trips "down under". I will also have recording distribution in southern hemisphere markets through Jim Moss's Jayrem Records of Wellington, NZ. That makes me happy!

After the end of my last update, I flew out from Florida to Frankfurt, Germany, in early November, to tour Germany with banjo virtuoso Andy Glandt of Jena, and Fiddle George Kralik, of Prague. We had a wonderful time. We played concert halls and pubs across Germany. Included were a huge renovated barn-made-concert hall in Schwemmsal, Germany, where after the show we had a jam session with members of the audience that lasted almost as long as the concert; the Green Island Pub in Zeitz (a classic, great, European pub); shows at a school for German children in Hatten, Germany; and many others. We did a few crazy things like playing in a pasture for a herd of Indian buffalo (as part of a promotion for the owner, who markets the meat). A highlight of the trip for me was a great jam session in a Jena, Germany, pub the very last night I spent in Germany. A group of us sat in the back of the place and played music all evening, trading tunes from various sources and communicating pretty darned well in spite of the fact that we did not speak the same first languages!

In my time in Germany I ate more kinds of sausage than I ever before dreamed existed. The Germans eat sausage constantly. I liked it all.

As always on my travels, I met lots of good friendly people, saw lots of beautiful scenery, and had a wonderful time. Unfortunately, cold, wet, snowy conditions in Germany along with the customs there of keeping buildings and homes at cool temperatures in winter, and of not wearing shoes in homes, brought on my chronic bronchitis and sinusitus with a vengeance. I was not to get completely free from the sinusitus until I got to New Zealand. Maybe the bright summer sunshine in NZ did the trick!

From Germany I travelled in mid-November to Scotland to play at the Riverside Inn in Perthshire, operated by the inimitable Campbell Smith, and the Taybank, also in that area, and to visit my dear friends Ken and Katie Allstaff in the outstandingly beautiful village of Aberfeldy, Scotland, not far from Edinburg. I met Ken and Katie years ago when I put together some American roots entertainment for a function they hosted in St. Petersburg, Florida. They've been interested in my music and very supportive ever since. Finally, after too long a time, I was able to visit them in Scotland. They were very, very kind to me. Wonderful hosts. They fed me haggis, which I enjoyed very much, along with lots of other tasty Scots food! They enabled me to see a doctor to help in the battle against bronchitis/sinusitus. We had many good times and much good conversation, which I value very highly. Ken and Katie are truly special people.

I also connected with my friend and fine musician Duncan Ferguson of Inverness, in the north of Scotland, who drove all the way down to Aberfeldy to spend a day. Duncan and I are planning to do some music together in northern Scotland in April. I really, really enjoy beautiful Scotland and the warm and friendly people there. There are lots of great musicians in Scotland, too. I'm looking forward to doing several more gigs there in my April 2005 swing through the U.K.

After Scotland--on to Holland. I flew into Schipol Airport in Amsterdam on November 18, took the train to the home of my friends Loek and Hanny Lamers in Wognum, North Friesland, and that very evening did Loek's nationally heard live radio show, on which I released in Europe my new CD, Remember Me. The album has had a very warm reception. I released it in the United States at Christmas time. Here in New Zealand, I have sold completely out of both Remember Me and Grandpa Flatpicked. That makes me very happy!

There is a lot of good music by good musicians on Remember Me, ranging from bluegrass and country to blues to swing to bluegrass, fingerpicking guitar Piedmont style, jazz, and some songs and tunes of mine that have not been recorded before. The Easy Street Band, Fiddle George Kralik, Radek Hnilica (banjo), others are featured. Part of this album was recorded in Europe, and part in a couple of locations in the States. We got a particularly good do on my song I Wish I Didn't Know, that a lot of you have enjoyed but which had not been recorded before. I did some of my instrumentals on this one too, including Wahoo, which I wrote to express my good feelings about the Wahoo Country Music Festival in Nebraska (which I will be playing again this June). Included a jazz cut from years ago, too: Georgia On My Mind. Lots more. Check it out. Write me/e-mail me if you want a copy. $15 each plus $2 packaging and shipping.

Back to Holland: Had a great visit there with Loek and Hanny. I met them in Norway some time back, and then they visited my home in Florida. Now I've visited their home in Holland. Great fun. On November 20 I played in the Alhambra Guitar Festival, at Grote Sint Laurenskerk, Alkmaar, Holland--a HUGE cathedral turned public building. Headliner on the show was American fingerpicking virtuoso Doyle Dykes, who was there with his (grown) daughters. We sort of hung out together some as the only Americans on the show. It was good to get to know them.

The day before Thanksgiving I got on a plane in Amsterdam and flew all the way to Tampa, where the next day at the home of friends Doug Travers and Ellie Schwartz (truly my "family") and a crowd of others we celebrated Thanksgiving at in Lutz, Florida. It was a great day!

A planned tour in Brazil had not materialized, and so when Terry Smith sent me an e-mail in December saying he wished I could join him on the New Zealand tour to do our stuff together as we have so often before in the States, I said, "let's do it". And we did. After about 22 hours in the air from Nashville (Terry) and Tampa (me), we arrived on January 4 at Christchurch and that very day travelled to the Timaru Soundshell to do a matinee and an evening show with a backup band we had never met before. The band, City Limits, was good, and the shows went well. Right from the start CD sales were brisk. Life on the road! I love it!

The next events on my schedule are a string of gigs in Texas with Terry Smith, and then some things of my own in Texas. Following that I will go to Florida for the Crystal River Coffeehouse March 4, 2005, a concert at Lichgate House, Tallahassee, Florida, date to be announced, the Willfest festival at Sertoma, just off I-75 near Dade City, Florida, on March 12-13 2005. I hope lots of my Florida friends will be at these events to visit!

Following these March dates, Europe once again in April. Then the midwestern USA festival season.

I'll let you know how all that plays out

As always, I enjoy writing these updates, and it pleases me greatly that so many of you have let me know you enjoy reading them! More to come!!

I'd like to hear from you, so please, dear friends, send me a few lines of e-mail to let me know how's by you.

Choose to be happy!

Charley Groth rainbowpr@juno.com